The 2025 triennial delegates conference of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Rivers State chapter, is now scheduled to hold on January 22 2025, instead of the original date of January 15, 2025.
High point of the conference will be the election of new officers who would run the union for the next three years.
The performance of the outgoing officers led by Mr. Stanley Job as chairman has provided a veritable platform for campaign for many of the contestants.
Placed on a scale, the outgoing state NUJ leadership has received bashing from members of the union, especially allegations bothering on lack of transparency and accountability.
The two camps squaring up for the election, the Mandate Team and the Transformation Team are latching on the alleged lack of transparency by the outgoing executives to launch their campaigns, piling blame on the Job team and all who were closely associated with the leadership, with a promise to right perceived wrongs.
While Mr. Paul Bazia of the state Ministry of Information is leading the Transformation Team as the chairmanship candidate, Mr. Ogboka Umeda of the Rivers State Television, is the numero uno for the Mandate Team contesting for the post of chairman.
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Bazia is not new in the game of NUJ politics, having squared up against Stanley Job three years ago in an acrimonious election that remained inconclusive for months before elders of the union waded in and cleared the logjam.
This time, he is back in the trenches with promises of how he will transform the state council with his potentials.
Umeda, who has held several positions at his RSTV chapel is counting on experience garnered along the line to reshape the union.
The two camps have sharply divided members of the union into two contending camps as the social media platforms of the union have become a battleground for the two opposing camps and their supporters to woo votes for their candidates.
